Find out about.......Plastics, Polymer Engineering and Leadership: Design Properties for Engineers: Adhesion of High Performance Polymers

In this blog post, we discuss the adhesion capability of different high performance polymers.

In general, adhesion bonding has several advantages compared to mechanical (screw based) connection methods:

- Glue joints allow a more uniform force distribution over the entire adhesive surface (especially under mechanical stress).

- Reduction of stress peaks

- Reduction of material damage due to drilling holes

- Weight reduction

- Excellent sealing properties

- Combination of different materials

There are several industrial adhesives available on the market. Selection of the optimal adhesive is not only dependent on the polymer compound, but also on the use conditions of the final part. The adhesive can enable a flexible or stiff bonding between the plastics. Also, there are adhesives which are temperature and chemical resistant. Furthermore, they can be electrical isolating or electrical conductive.

High performance polymers are not easy to bond since they have a high chemical resistance towards solutions. The chemical resistance of high performance polymers we discussed here. However, even for extreme chemical resistance polymers such as PTFE and PVDF, adhesives are available.